


gimme shelter

by anomalocaris



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron Compliant, BuckyNat Secret Santa, Domestic, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 04:02:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5693980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalocaris/pseuds/anomalocaris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He finds her in the middle of a warm winter, a few months shy of two years after the world ended, when all he has to his name is a fractured mind and a gaping wound and a rucksack full of things designed to kill.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gimme shelter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vylla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vylla/gifts).



> Written for the BuckyNat Secret Santa 2015. Directly pre-Civil War. Veered away from the original prompt somewhat, predictably, but hopefully it is still recognizable. All typos are my own fault; there will likely be a few.
> 
> Title taken, obviously, from the [song of the same name. ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM8ix0siRVQ)

He finds her in the middle of a warm winter, a few months shy of two years after the world ended, when all he has to his name is a fractured mind and a gaping wound and a rucksack full of things designed to kill.

Or, perhaps: perhaps she is the one who finds him.

The truth is a relative thing, after all.

*

The thing about the gaping wound is that it’s literal. This is unexpected; he laughs about it, later. _Talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve._ But in the moment, at the time, there is no laughter. Blood is coming out of his arm and trickling down to settle in the hollow of his elbow, the edges of it shining in what little light there is from the half-moon, and Jesus _fuck_ does it hurt.

It’s sort of nice, to be a thing that hurts.

The wound is from a knife: a lucky hit from a man who is dead now. Bucky tugged it out, when it happened, from between the layers of muscle and skin and fabric, and in one swift movement gave it a new home in the neck of its original owner. That had been the last of them. There were five, to start with. One had gotten his throat crushed; another had his chest staved in beneath Bucky’s boot. Sickly crunch. Splintering of bone like wood. The others had not fared much better.

Still: they were lucky, in their own way. He had not let them suffer; had not _wanted_ them to suffer. They had come for him and he had fought back, in the way of any cornered animal, but that was all. When it was over he knelt down by them, full of something strange that might have been regret, before he closed their eyes one by one and dragged them into the warehouse he’d come looking for.

He does not believe in war, anymore.

*

The warehouse he was looking for is in Georgia, midway between Tbilisi and Batumi.

It’s beautiful countryside, out there, even in the dead of winter: the buffer of the Caucasus, rising like teeth from out of the earth, protects the lowlands from the very worst weather. Though it is cold the landscape remains unburdened by snow. The fields of winter wheat by the roadside move in the wind, striking up a slow susurrus rustling, their stalks bowed low and heavy with frost. Tangles of blackberries, devoid of all leaves, grow in the ditches. A cow or two grazes sedately in a half-frozen paddock. Rusting hulks of Soviet-era tractors lie discarded by fences. A vendor hawks soup from a cart by the highway. It’s a picturesque scene, in its own way.

Amongst all this is the warehouse, which had once been used to store grain, back in the days of empire: or, at least, had very much wanted you to think that it stored grain. The very best predators hide in plain sight. It was a Department facility, in truth: for keeping records, mostly, or at least that’s what the man in Prague tells Bucky once he threatens to pull all his teeth out. He has to remove three and lay them out, bloodied, on the little metal tray next to him before he admits that this was not all, that they did other things there, too.  Kept all sorts of equipment, never knew what it was for, I swear: but they brought the Winter Soldier there, yes, a few times. Then they sold it, in 1996. There won’t be anything there now.

This is all Bucky needed to know. He leaves him there, still tied to a chair. Someone will find him. He doesn’t kill them, anymore, the way he used to. Something about the encounter feels strange to him, and he doesn’t realise for hours after that it was the phrasing the man had used that disturbed him so: _the Winter Soldier,_ he had said, not _you._ Is he really so different now?

He doesn’t feel different.

*

Once the bodies are inside, he pours a line of gasoline leading to the entrance and strikes a match.

*

Like all great changes, the fire takes hold slowly.

For a long while it’s not clear that anything is amiss at all: and then the smoke starts, after some interminable time, spilling grey and ghostlike out of poorly-sealed windows and under doors and through cracks in the roof where house swallows used to flutter in and out. It’s hard to make out, against the dark sky. Fire begins to whisper and rustle and then roar, scratching like an animal for a way out, at the heavy warehouse doors, which have been barred, and at the windows, which shatter under the pressure, sending glass and orange flame flying.

It’s nice—or, not _nice,_ but something close. There is a word for it. A Greek word. _A purification,_ it means, he knows, but the word itself escapes him. Many things are lost to him now. It’s a funeral pyre, hot and bright and beautiful, for his old life, and a baptism for the new. This is the last such place Bucky can remember.

He revels in it.

“Aw,” says a voice behind him, then. “Did I miss the party?”

*

Of all the enemies he’s ever faced, the Black Widow, he thinks, is the strangest.

It’s her, of course. Bucky spins around at her voice, knife in hand, in an instant ready to strike out, hackles up. He expects violence. Why wouldn’t he? It wasn’t so long ago that he had tried his damndest to put her in the ground. The movement—and the memory—hurt. He knows not to let it show on his face.

“Easy, tiger,” she soothes, apparently perfectly calm. “What’s this? New Year’s festivities?”

The knife stays in his palm. She’s in civilian clothing, something dark and comfortable. He can’t see any weapons, but he knows they’ll be there. “What do you want?”

“Heard you were in Tbilisi. Not too hard to follow you from there.” She gestures at the burning building. “After all, you’re being so subtle.”

That isn’t an answer. It isn’t even _close_ to being an answer.

“Fuck off,” he says.

She doesn’t leave.

*

“I told you to get lost,” he says, eyes on the inferno, after waiting maybe thirty seconds.

“You’re bleeding everywhere,” she points out then, as if he might not be aware.

He glances down at it. “Be fine.”

“ _You_ might be. But those clothes of yours won’t be. Do you know how hard it is to get blood out of fabric?”

Yes. Yes, he does. He wishes he didn’t. His eyes cut to her.

“Stupid question,” she says, a little lower, and does not continue. For a while they both stand there, watching the building burn. Deprived of the strength of its supports a piece of timber breaks; with a creak and a groan it crashes, sending a rush of sparks up into the night air. It reminds him of a tree falling. He thinks: at the end it got to be a tree again. Blood runs down his fingers; drips steadily onto the concrete.

“You need to get that looked at,” the Black Widow says eventually. “And you’ve got about seven minutes before the police show up. I’m sure you’d love to play the martyr, but being thrown in a backwoods Georgian jail cell for arson isn’t my idea of a nice evening.”

He thinks: _There isn’t a jail cell built that could hold you._ He thinks: _I can take them._ He thinks: _Maybe I want them to arrest me._ He thinks: _What are you doing here?_ He says: “I’ll heal.”

“I know you will,” she answers. “And fast, too, right? But you can still feel it.”

Bucky doesn’t answer. It’s a leading question. “What do you want? Did—did Steve send you?”

She laughs; short and sharp. “Steve still thinks you’re in Minsk.”

They kept bottles of chemicals and all sorts of sensitive pieces of equipment inside, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth. The fire reaches them and they explode, too, now, brief flashes of blues and greens and purples. The force is enough that Bucky can feel it, even from the distance he’s at. “So why?”

He sees her tilt her head out of the corner of his eye. “Call me a concerned citizen. Also, you look like shit and you’re making a mess. The world’s getting pretty sick of our messes.”

Every instinct in him says _run,_ says _hide,_ says _don’t listen to her she’s a liar you mean nothing to her._ In the distance he can hear sirens. He swallows down the panicked animal part of himself, the part that had put a bullet in her without flinching, and says, “I hope you thought to bring a getaway car.”

*

She did.

She takes them back along the highway, through fields and tiny shitty settlements where dogs, caught in the headlights, skitter away from them on the half-frozen dirt roads, eyes green and luminous in the dark. Bucky spends the trip in exhausted silence, sitting in the passenger seat with a copper and blue scarf—hers—wrapped around his arm as a makeshift tourniquet, grateful that she doesn’t seem interested in asking questions. He doesn’t realize until the eastern sky begins to lighten that he can hear gulls; that she’s brought him back to Batumi, by the sea.

“Barnes,” she says then, and he startles out of his half-sleep. “Wake up. C’mon.”

He rubs the fog away from the window with his good hand. “This is your safehouse?”

“You sound skeptical.”

He is. It’s one of the old two-storey Communist-era buildings. They built ‘em all the same; he knows the inside layout like he knows how to kill a man. It’s painted a bright and garish yellow. A lot of them are, now. Good way to cover up the past. The first floor of this one is a deli: cured meats hang in the windows, alongside artfully arranged kitschy trinkets and bags of loose-leaf tea. “Didn’t know you were in the pastrami business.”

“I’m full of surprises,” she says, easy, but something in her expression suggests she is startled by this. She had not expected the humanity in him. He knows. He feels the same. “Come on. Second floor, and hurry up. You’re bleeding on my upholstery.”

*

It’s early enough still that she has to turn on the lights, when she steps in.

He realizes with a start that she’s kept a little apartment up here, in this distant corner of the world. It’s neat, if old, and warm-colored and fully-stocked with furniture.

There's a brown sofa, half-covered by a throw patterned with delicate abstract designs and flanked by yellow armchairs. The kitchen is papered with horrible 1970s floral wallpaper, but there's a rack of neat utensils on the wall and spices and pickles in jars lined up against the counter. There's a breakfast bar. An old wooden dining table, big enough for six, sits a ways back from it. It's freezing in here right now, but Natasha walks with a purpose over to the ancient white radiator in the living room. There are fake plants on the windowsill: succulents and cacti. Desert creatures. 

"How often are you here?" he asks.

"I have someone to take care of it, if that's what you mean. But they know not to bother me. First aid kit's in the bedroom. Sit down."

He does, awkwardly and not without pain, in one of the over-sized armchairs. It's too soft for him; he sinks a little into it. 

She comes back after a few minutes, a glass of water in one hand and a couple of pills in the other. The first-aid kit is tucked under one arm. Bucky eyes her warily. “What are those?”

“Painkillers,” she says, simply. She places them down on the little table next to him. “You need stitches, or has it healed enough already?”

*

Bucky takes the painkillers from her and the needle, also, in the end, and stitches it up himself, hands bloodied, bent grimacing over her bathroom sink.

He passes out in her ridiculous yellow armchair while she’s making tea for herself.

It’s the best sleep he can remember.

*

“You can stay here,” she says, in the morning.

Bucky is still perched in the yellow armchair, which he has pulled close to the window so that he might look out. He lives his life expecting threats. He blinks at her, where she’s curled up under heavy blankets on the sofa, watching him. She must have slept there. “What?”

“You can stay here, Barnes. You look like you could do with someplace to stay.”

Does he? His expression must be affronted, because she sighs and says, “Take it. Don’t question it. There’s food, and running water. Heating. Nobody’s going to look for you here. It’s better than sleeping on the streets.”

“It’s yours,” he says, confused.

"I've got plenty of places to stay. And you don't."

He works his jaw; chews on his lip. There are many things he understands, but charity is not one of them. There is no such thing as charity. Everyone has their reasons. Everyone expects their rewards. "Why are you helping me?"

"Out of the goodness of my heart."

"Really."

She sits up, then, so that she can look at him properly. She seems troubled; at war with herself. He can see a dozen different responses flash across her face. "Because you mean something to Steve," she says, finally. "And Steve means something to me."

It might not be a lie, but it sure as hell ain't the whole truth, neither. But Steve: yeah, that's good enough. That he understands.

So he stays.

*

She checks in on him, from time to time.

Mostly it’s text messages.

His phone buzzes at 4:43 in the morning, when he’s still half-asleep on the floor (the floor; the bed is too vast and too soft and too empty, so he strips the blankets from it and uses the floor). The number is marked as private, but he knows who it is. _Not dead yet?_

He huffs an indulgent little sigh; rolls his eyes and taps out a response. _Replying, ain’t I?_

Then, a little ping as she sends him a picture. _Look at this cat. Reminds me of you :)_

It’s—it’s a tiny little cat, looking extremely grumpy. _Very funny,_ he types, and presses down on the top button with a vengeance until the screen goes dark. He rolls over and goes back to sleep.

*

Sometimes she asks him things that don’t make sense until later.

_What’s your favorite?_

Two pictures of almost identical kitchen shelves accompany it. He thinks she might be at an Ikea.

 _Neither,_ he answers.

A week after this he finds a box on the doorstep, wet in one corner from the overnight rain, with a note taped to it. He frowns, kicks it in case it’s a bomb or full of anthrax or something—though he realizes after a second that kicking it will achieve precisely nothing, and wonders if he’s going nuts—and picks up the sodden note.

 _Hope you know how to put shelves up,_ it says, in the nondescript neat cursive he knows by now is hers. _Let me know if you need a hand. Oh, wait._

“Ha fucking ha,” he grumbles, but he carries it inside, and spends his morning scowling at instructions and accidentally bruising his real thumb trying to hammer nails.

The shelves do look pretty nice.

*

It goes like this for months.

Natasha sends him money, and trinkets, and texts. Photos. Postcards. It starts to feel—not like they're friends, but close. He feels like he knows her, somehow, in some intimate way.

One day it’s a little packet of chocolates from St Petersburg; artisanal individual pieces wrapped in bright foil. The next: an antique steel mug, the kind they used to use during the war, someone’s service number still stamped on the bottom. _One you can’t break,_ reads the note.

Bucky doesn’t know how to feel about this. He still remembers his perfectly: _32557088_. Why should he remember this, instead of the rest? He can’t remember the face of his own mother, but he remembers this meaningless string of numbers. Is that not a cruelty? He is more than numbers. But it’s something, in the end, and any scrap of information is worth clinging to.

Three days after that he gets a postcard from Cape Town. On the back she has written: _Sunny. Not eaten by lions yet._ The front has a painting of the harbor at night, all aglow with lights and bright neon. _Greetings from South Africa,_ it says. _Wish you were here!_ It does not seem like a place meant for lions. Then again: all these wild things must adapt to this new world, or else die alone. He understands a little of what it is to be a lion.

Then there’s the photo.

It’s not even a _good_ photo. He gets it at just past two in the morning, one day, when he’s still awake battling his demons and watching late-night Baltic television (he watches it for them; he won’t lie to himself and say otherwise: the Avengers make the news almost every day, though not for any good reasons). It’s a little blurry, a little shadowed: taken from the inside of a plane just before the jump order is given, he thinks. He recognize the red lights. He recognizes the rest, too.

It’s of Steve.

He’s turned away from the camera, slightly, his face half in shadow. His mouth curves up in a half-smile; Bucky thinks he must be talking to someone out of shot. You can’t see much of his face, thanks to the helmet. His eyes are bluer than Bucky remembers them being. The knowledge that he has allowed himself to forget small details of Steve’s face comes over him like rain. Something small and anxious and full of longing curls its way around his heart, vinelike.

 _He misses you, you know,_ Natasha tells him a moment later.

 _Thanks,_ is the only reply he can think of to give.

*

Then, one nondescript Tuesday night, when the rain is clattering repetitive against the dark windows and he’s sleepy and nursing a cup of coffee: she appears on his doorstep.

He opens it reluctantly, coiled like some animal ready to lash out, hand inches away from the handgun in his jacket. She looks coolly back at him, damp hair curling copper in the wet, hunched up in an over-sized hoodie, a collection of plastic shopping bags in one hand.

They stare at each other for a moment.

“You’re supposed to use paper,” he says eventually; steps aside to let her in. He could have asked questions. He _should_ have asked questions. But then, he reasons, she might ask some of him.

“What?”

“Paper,” he repeats. “Paper bags. Not plastic. It’s bad for the environment.”

She snorts and breezes past him into the kitchen. “I need somewhere to stay. Just for tonight.”

He frowns. “It’s your house.”

“I said you could have it,” she says, stripping off her wet hoodie and setting the bags on the counter. Her hair is new, he thinks: curled now, and darker. He likes it, and startles himself by thinking so. She pushes a bag down to him. “Here. I’m bribing you with Chinese. Better than whatever you normally have.”

He opens it eagerly, while she rummages in the cupboards. There’s an easy sudden camaraderie about the two of them: maybe because they’re both liars. Liars who don’t ever talk about anything real get along very well, he finds.

*

She makes tea for the two of them.

He’s not the sort of person who drinks tea. He found, quite quickly, once he was Bucky Barnes again—or whatever was left of him—that he had things he liked; things he _remembered_ liking. Coffee was one of those likes.

So he watches her with a sort of curiosity, sitting quietly at the breakfast bar, as she carefully selects leaves, curled and dark, from their jar, and puts them in the pot. She pulls a lemon out from one of the bags; raids the cupboard for sugar and the fridge for milk. It seems to him to be a delicate process, with a rhythm and a pattern to it.

Bucky wonders briefly why she likes it: is it the tea, or the making of the tea? In the ritual of the tea can be found an affirmation: that you are a person, who has tea and lemons and sugar, if nothing else. Here is the tea. You are a person who makes the tea; who creates _something,_ however small. There is good in you.

“What else have you got in there,” he says, breaking open a packet of sweet and sour sauce and pouring it over what’s left of his meal. Natasha makes a disgusted face at him.

“Clothes,” she says anyway, pointing at one, and then at the other. “Books. Some essentials. I figure you don’t get out much.”

He grunts. It’s true.

She settles down on the stool beside him, unwrapping her meal, waiting for the tea to brew.

*

Bucky realizes, later, cramming broccoli and shrimp into his mouth: there were four bags. One for the food, one for the books, one for the clean clothes, and one—

He gestures at it. “What’s in the bag?”

“A makeover,” Natasha says, and smirks in just the right way.  Something midway between suspicion and outright panic flashes across his face.

“I don’t need a—a makeover,” he says, putting down his fork, slowly.

She tilts her head. “Yeah? When was the last time you washed that mess you call hair?”

“Yesterday,” he says, defensive, and amends it at her cutting disbelieving stare to, “I don’t know. Recently.”

Natasha snorts. “In 1993, more like.”

“That’s an exaggeration.”

“Not much of one. Look at that thing. It has an ecosystem.”

“You’re crazy,” Bucky says. “You were barely even _alive_ in 1993.”

She shrugs. If there’s a flash of something else in her eyes at that, some hurt masterfully-hidden, neither of them says anything. Everyone has their own secrets.

“You’re not touching my hair,” Bucky says into the silence. “What the fuck have you got in there, anyway? Soap?”

Her eyes narrow. “Have you been washing your hair with _soap_? That 20-cent-a-bar gunk you’ve been carrying around?”

He didn’t bother asking how she knew. Of course she knew. “No,” he says, and then, “People use soap for that! That’s what it’s for!”

“Not in the 21st century, it’s not,” she says, and begins pulling items from the bag with renewed determination. “Now go and start the bath running.”

“I don’t like you,” Bucky says.

*

Natasha instructs him to leave the room, once he’s done that, to wait until she’s ready. He is handed a towel—blue, with puppies on; he wonders where the fuck she gets this stuff and whether she does it just to tease him—and told, blithely, as if he’s being told to open the curtains or change the TV channel, to strip.

“What,” he says.

“You heard me.” She catches sight of his expression and rolls her eyes. “I don’t _care,_ Barnes. I’ve seen it all before. Trust me. I’m not going to look.” Then she smirks. “Though I wouldn’t _mind_ looking. It’s been a long day.”

He snorts, faking indifference, and turns away before she can see his face go red.

*

So he does as he’s told, quick and perfunctory, the way the years in the military and as the Soldier taught him. He folds his clothes neatly, and lays them out on the bed, and then awkwardly wraps the towel around his waist.

He looks down at himself: he’s bigger, he thinks, now that he’s been out of the tank for so long. They used to feed him via a drip, mostly, then. He forgets how many scars he has. A lot of them are from the early days. They didn’t know to let him heal before freezing him, then, or didn’t care.  The very worst are from before he was the Soldier: the gnarled and white flesh along his left side, where the arm joins the rest of him. He remembers getting those ones: the murmur of voices, the bright lights, the awful whine of the bone saw.

He wishes he didn’t.

And then, pulling him out of that nightmare, Natasha says, “Hey. You done yet?”

Bucky starts, guiltily, and then slinks out of his room to stand in the doorway. “I guess,” he says, and then blinks at the tub, earlier thoughts forgotten. “It’s yellow.”

“It’s _gold,”_ she corrects, slightly smug.

“And _bubbly._ ”

It is both of these things, and how. He’s about 70% sure there’s glitter in it.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She rolls her eyes at him and pats the lip of the tub. “It’s not gonna kill you, just make you smell a little bit more—respectable. C’mon.”

“What are you gonna do?” he wants to know, wary.

“Wash the horror that’s your hair, for starters. Then you can have some proper soap and I’ll leave you to it.”

He fidgets, but relents. There’s no use arguing with her; he’s learnt that by now. “Don’t look,” he warns, and she snorts and turns away obediently so that he can step in.

It’s hot, hotter than he expected. He makes a small surprised and pleased noise when he dips his toes in.

“Temperature okay?” she asks.

“Fine. I like it hot.”

She turns to look at him, then. “I figured you would.” It’s gentle. “I do, too. It’s the cold, right? For so long.”

Bucky chews on his lip, looks down at the morass of bubbles. He can’t see practically anything under them; doesn’t know what the fuck he was worried about, really. It’s warm. He feels very quickly like a giant lazy cat; maybe even like someone who could sleep easy at night. The chill of the tank seems very far away. “Yeah.”

One corner of her mouth quirks up. “Come on, soldier boy,” she says, with finality, and selects a bottle seemingly at random from her little line-up, dumping a sizeable amount into her palm.

He flinches at the first touch, half because it’s cold and half because he’s always flinching, these days, but Natasha’s good about it. “It’ll warm up,” she tells him, easy, and starts working it in. “God, this is a mess. Do you even know what conditioner is?”

“I’ve seen the ads.” This makes her snicker. “Shut up,” he protests, with less vehemence than he’d intended. “The fuck’s in this, anyways? Smells like butter.”

“I _very much_ doubt it’s butter. Alright, c’mon, dunk your head in.”

He comes up a few seconds later, grumpy and dripping, and Natasha laughs at him. _“What?”_

She laughs again. He likes the sound, secretly. “Oh, nothing,” she says, and grins. “You just look so terrifying, sitting in your bubble bath.”

He flicks water at her and she just ignores him, tugging on his metal shoulder to move him where she wants. She doesn’t seem to mind touching it. He shies from it a little anyway, enough that she notices. Her hand stills. “Did it hurt?” she asks then, very quiet.

“I don’t remember it,” he says.

She hums, accepting it as it is, though she surely knows a lie when she hears one. She just grabs the conditioner and pops the cap, rubbing her suddenly lemon-scented fingers into his scalp. The feeling makes him shivery and sleepy. Bucky can’t remember feeling this—this sort of contentment—for a very long time. He half-closes his eyes and silently wills her not to stop.

“Look at you,” she murmurs, pleased and very soft, after a few minutes of this. “You like that, huh?”

He opens one eye a fraction and mumbles, “’s nice.”

There is the smallest of smiles on her face. “It’s been a long time since someone was gentle with you, hasn’t it?”

He doesn’t want to talk about that, not now, and so he says, “Well, don’t think anyone’s ever done _this_ to me before. Don’t get me wrong, though, I ain’t complaining.”

“Duck under,” she says again. “Unless you want me to dump a bucket of water on your head.”

*

Bucky wipes the soap out of his eyes, and tucks his wet hair behind his ears—she’d offered to cut it but the words inspired some deep-seated panic in him, still, and he had to refuse—and looks up to find her watching him, pensive.

He doesn’t even really care. He feels all loose-limbed and happy; defences down. She’s very close to him. The rain beats down on the roof. He realizes, all of a sudden and for the first time, how beautiful she is, and how young: she’s soft, really, and kind, also, underneath it all. “What happened today?” he asks, quiet, feeling a bit like he’s breaking a spell or overstepping a boundary. “What are you doing here? Really?”

She swallows; shakes her head. There’s a shift in the mood. She seems so suddenly lonely.

“Okay,” he says, and then, tentative, and feeling more human than he has in a very long time, he asks, “Can I help?”

Natasha looks thoughtful; a little daring. “Maybe,” she says. She shifts, like she’s steeling herself. Reflexively, she licks her lips. Then, with a determination and a focus to it, she grabs his chin in one small hand and kisses him.

*

He tenses with it, for a moment, not unsure so much as startled. Her mouth is soft on his, persistent. He forgot what this feels like; what it is to do this. Something soft and small and hopeful, that he hadn’t known was lurking there, swells up in him.

He kisses back.

*

 

And then she pulls away. He blinks; cold with the loss of it.

“Wait.”

He does. He is nothing if not patient. It takes her a moment to find the right words.

“The last time I kissed someone it, uh—didn’t go over so well,” she says, slightly breathless and lips wet, the corner of the lower one tugged into her mouth. “You gotta tell me, and you gotta mean it, okay? You want this?”

 _Oh._ He’s struck for a moment by the magnitude of this statement; the vulnerability and hurt written clear on her face. “Why wouldn’t I?” he asks. He touches her real hand with his real hand; extending what humanity he has left. The blood, under the surface, which makes the skin hot: this is a thing they both have. They have their humanity, and a dry place to sleep, most days, with warm blankets, and each other, and they don’t need to be things that kill, if they want instead to play at peace. For tonight, at least. At least for tonight.

She looks at their hands and he looks at her.

“I want this,” Bucky says, soft: and gentle, real gentle, the way he thought he never would be again, he pulls her in.

*

For once he sleeps undisturbed by dreams, in the quiet dark, the rain a steady drumbeat on the roof and her heart warm under his hand, her body warm around his.

*

In the morning, though: in the morning he wakes to an empty bed and finds her in the kitchen, laying out her things. It’s early but the light is gold, catching her hair and lighting the edges up in brilliant copper. The storm from the previous night is gone. Sometimes she hurts to look at. He stands there, not saying anything.

“I have to go,” she says.

Bucky exhales. He knows already; he knew the moment she kissed him. “You’re not coming back.”

She doesn’t look at him; picks up a mirror and looks into it before placing it carefully into her bag. “I got a call. Got it yesterday, actually. Things are getting—I’m needed back—elsewhere.”

He wants to be surprised. He wants so very bad to be surprised. But there’s some tension in the air, unseen; the crackling electric stillness before rain. Whatever storm is on the horizon, it is for each of them to weather in their own ways. Bucky won’t begrudge her freedom: not as one who knows so well the lack of it. He looks away, throat working.

“There are a lot of people after you,” she says then, into the silence. “The UN’s lighting a fire under us for it. And it looks like our old friends China and Russia finally caved and threw their hats into the ring as well.” She smiles, quick and without humour. “Though I don’t know if they want you _dead_ so much as they want you _back._ ”

There’s a hell of a lot of people who would like him best full of bullet holes, or else defanged and dancing in a market square. Bucky knows this. “So?”

“So the Security Council agrees on something, for once. Which means this resolution is going to pass.” A pause. “Which means you’re a wanted man, James Buchanan Barnes. And so am I, if I don’t play along.”

“And you’re going to play along,” he says, low.

She looks at him and Bucky sees himself there, suddenly, in her eyes. There’s a terrible weight about her, an exhaustion that no amount of rest can fix. She seems suddenly to him very old, and bowed by wounds half-healed. What has she lived through, to be like this, so young? He drops his eyes from hers.

“Maybe it’s time,” is what she says. “I’m tired of running. I’m just—I’m tired.”

He feels suddenly like an animal trying to disguise an awful injury. “Will I see you again?”

Natasha seems surprised by the question. For a minute she’s quiet, just looking at him, methodically stripping away all the hidden parts of him like he’s a rat on a table. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

There’s a lot he could say. He laughs a little. “More than you know.”

*

They say their goodbyes in the doorway, the ancient yellow paint of the door chipping away under his anxious fingers and the light from the leadwork throwing strange colors across their faces. The glass curve of a rose lights up her cheek. He touches it before he can stop himself; her small fingers curl around his wrist, undaunted by the chill of the metal.

“Sorry,” he says, and startles himself when it comes out in a whisper.

Natasha shakes her head wordlessly and stretches up to kiss him. The press of her lips is gentle and warm. He closes his eyes and wills it to linger.  “I’ll see you around, lover boy,” she murmurs, their mouths almost touching, and steps back. “You can stay here. Keep your head down, hey? And don’t freeze to death.”

He doesn’t know what to say. She shakes her head again. “Don’t drag it out, Barnes. I’ll be fine.”

“Just—stay safe,” he says, quiet.

 She smiles at him and is gone.

*

Inside the apartment, Bucky is alone with his own head.

He does the dishes, because he can; because this is a thing people do. He cleans up and wipes soap suds from his hands and stands in the shower until he feels clean, water beating down over his back. He drags the blankets, which still smell like her, from the bed. He curls up in them on the awful brown sofa, mug of coffee balanced in his lap. The steam from it gets caught in the light coming through the window, making strange twisting shapes. He watches the news. Such a mundane thing.

Bucky doesn’t quite know what peace is, anymore, but he thinks, maybe: maybe this is a form it can take.

He pushes the loss inside of him down and pulls out the phone she gave him. The number is as familiar to him as breathing, though he’s never called it, not before now. This is what she’d want from him.

It rings twice before there’s an answer.

“Steve? It’s me.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, I am also on [Tumblr. ](http://www.predatories.tumblr.com) And yes: Bucky's safehouse is, of course, inspired by the one we see in the Civil War trailer.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [gimme shelter [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6152416) by [peacefulboo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefulboo/pseuds/peacefulboo)




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